Letter:Overpopulation is the least of our problems

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The column by Sharon Phillips (“Women’s rights under attack,” Sept. 23) was almost laughably self-contradictory. It excoriated those who would “turn back the clock,” and yet it read like a 1970s feminist manifesto.

Alarmist voices dominated those times, such as that of Paul Erlich, whose “The Population Bomb” began with the statement: “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”

Of course, Erlich was wildly wrong. Somehow technology and resources kept up with demand so that the real causes of starvation, when it occurred, were not due to any shortage of food, but the “politics of food” (such as Somali or Sudanese warlords halting food shipments because they’d end up feeding their enemies).

Like Erlich, Phillips clings to the outdated and inaccurate view that “overpopulation is the single most important problem the world faces.”

Terrorism? Rogue nations with nuclear weapons? Human trafficking? Drug addiction? No, those are all secondary issues. The problem is people.

Here’s a little update for Phillips: It’s not the 1970s. The native populations of the United States and Western Europe are not replacing themselves. Immigration from poorer countries (those Phillips arrogantly terms “Third World”) are the only reasons why the populations of the USA and Western Europe are being maintained.

The future of the USA is increasingly Hispanic, as the future of Europe is increasingly Muslim, because each year a higher percentage of young people come from those populations, and a lower number of children whose parents were native citizens are being conceived.

The more recent and accurate research indicates a dearth of children, disproportionate to the increasing number of elderly people who will depend on them, not “overpopulation.”

A lot more could be said, but The Signal’s policy limits letters to 300 words.